


The Parting Glass

by eidolocene



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Gen, Post-Canon Fix-It, honorary loser patricia blum uris, less of a resurrection fic and more of an apotheosis fic, the losers forget and collectively begin to remember
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28795551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eidolocene/pseuds/eidolocene
Summary: A void leaves an opening. Stan and Eddie are forgotten, but not gone.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	The Parting Glass

**Author's Note:**

> "They walked into the Town House on a wave of laughter, and as Bill pushed through the glass door, Beverly caught sight of something which she never spoke of but never forgot. For just a moment she saw their reflections in the glass - only there were six, not four, because Eddie was behind Richie and Stan was behind Bill, that little half-smile on his face." - Stephen King, It
> 
> "Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity." - Stephen King, The Gunslinger

In Bev Marsh’s unbroken memory, the first time she’d seen them was at that bar on West 6th Street. This, no doubt, inspired her naming of them.

The bar was ordinary in a way that suggested unintentional non-trendiness, which was part of what drew her and Ben in as regulars in the first place. Even in Nebraska, they were recognizable - if not by face, then by name - but under the cover of the sports and booze and cash, the bar offered relative anonymity. Few of the patrons cared for fashion or architecture beyond the clothes they were wearing or their deck-building plans, which left Bev and Ben content to lounge and chat and root for whichever football team the rest of the house seemed to favor. Tonight it was the Browns, leaving Ben surprised and Bev gleeful.

Bev nudged him lightly under the table. “Remember, we want them to _win_.”

Ben laughed and made a show of jokingly shushing her, though there was no real need to under the ambient chatter and canned audio.

It was raining when Bev stepped out alone for a smoke. She no longer felt the need to hide to light a cigarette, but she still didn’t want to expose Ben to the nastiness of it, so she excused herself and walked to the front entrance of the building. She’d usually go out back, out of consideration for the other patrons (unnecessary, since the majority of them were still complaining about the statewide indoor smoking ban that had passed over a decade before), but the awning provided an island of space away from the downpour, so she was willing to bend the usual rules she kept for herself.

The bar had once been a department store, with two window displays that jutted out past the entrance on either side. Though they no longer held mannequins, they still advertised the bar within, with the floor space used for tables and extra seating. She always avoided sitting there herself, not wanting to feel like a posed doll, but found her reflection framed in the glass to greet her there anyway. To have herself as company was familiar.

She looked soaked through, her shirt dark and wet and clinging. She scowled and the lit end of the cigarette burned against the darkness. _Great. Now I’ll spend the rest of the night drenched and miserable._

And then, as she so frequently had to, she reminded herself that Ben was not Tom. Ben wouldn’t make her sit there til he was done, her wet clothes be damned. Ben wouldn’t even wait for her to announce her own discomfort - he could always sense it almost as quickly as she felt it, even though she had been so careful, over the years, to dampen all external tells of her own emotions. Perceptiveness, unfortunately, was one trait the two men shared.

Back in New York, so many people had been like Tom - people thrilled by the discomfort and embarrassment of others. She assumed it was universal in high-paying spaces, related in some way to ambition; pride seemed to be the one sin that couldn’t be enjoyed in isolation, as it required a second party to feel superior to. One could be envious or wrathful against oneself, but pride inspired men to coax others up to their level just to throw them down, and then to laugh as if it was their victim’s fault for trying to fly.

The men who built and bought the world that she had fought to be in had formed it into a sort of theater to showcase their favorite fools. She learned that there were two ways to avoid being cast in that role - either you stay low enough to avoid catching attention (and go home broke and broken), or you make yourself entertainment by your own merit; cover your true vulnerabilities and invent pleasant decoys that can stand up to being made targets. Bev had avoided being a jester by becoming a magician - she relied on talent and hard work to get to the top, and charm and misdirection to disarm those who would see her fall.

She had expected Ben to be one of these men when she had met him on that flight a few months ago. There was no first class seating available from Bangor to New York, so chance had seated them together. The flight was, fortunately, underbooked, so Bev took the window seat while Ben spread into the aisle. They were silent strangers until the flight attendant came to offer them a drink, at which point Bev found herself nearly out of her seat laughing at a quip Ben had delivered to the woman taking his order - something about vodka and prune juice, which had no right to be as funny as she found it.

They spoke easily after that. It turned out that there was a year their childhoods had overlapped in the same area of Maine, in some no-name town 30 miles out from Bangor. It was possible they'd even attended the same school, but they didn't seem able to pin down the specifics enough to be sure - Ben had gone to so many different schools he could hardly keep them straight, and Bev had never found it easy to remember any of her youth before she'd moved to live with her aunt.

The flight was nearly over when they'd finally completed their proper introductions. Of course, it was their relative fame that had made each other feel so familiar. It felt like the first time in a decade that "fashion designer" had come up as an afterthought rather than the first point of contact. They stayed in touch after leaving the airport, deciding to meet again, first for drinks, and later as “plus-ones”, joining each other on weekend getaways.

She was learning that, with Ben, it was never a waiting game or a power play - Ben saw her and (shockingly) invited her into her own comfort. She sighed, leaning against the building, her breath in front of her visible thanks to both the smoke and the chill. Even with all his good-nature and gentleness, she still dreaded walking back inside soaking wet. She already wanted nothing more than to just go home and dry off.

But she _was_ dry. She had not been in the rain. She felt no wet chill and, though the reflection showed her hair frizzy with humidity, it wasn’t drenched as the rest of her seemed to be, not with water but-

She felt her body freeze, and stared right into the eyes of her other self. Nights as dark as this one masked the distinction between red and black, and the only source of light was the harsh orange of the one working streetlight and the bud of her cigarette. How, then, was she so certain?

She knew better than to gasp; she knew how to recognize nasty tricks ( _“Tricks?” Who could be tricking her?_ ) in total silence, but still reflexively looked down only to find her clothes perfectly ordinary, no injury or stain in sight. She looked back at her blood-soaked reflection with what she hoped was stern disinterest. _She really should be more frightened. What about this was familiar? What about this was so easy to ignore?_

As a young girl, she liked to stare at the Magic Image effects on the backs of cereal boxes; if one looks long enough at nonsense, it resolves into substance. Now, as she made eye contact with herself in the window, she did what she had fought to learn to do as a child and adopted a soft focus. It had been hard, at first, to have a physical item in front of her and then deliberately look beyond it when she knew it was as close as her own arm, but it had been honed into a skill, allowing her to look respectfully at the evils in her life while denying them true eye contact. She fell back under her own spell, looking past the image of her eyes and past the glass pane and past the unoccupied table and chairs in the window nook.

She saw her own form reflected normally, clean and dry, but superimposed over it was another - two others, in fact - there were two sets of arms in addition to her own. And the blood…

She locked eyes with the composite apparition and the image shifted. The men ( _they were men_ , she thought, despite their features being hidden behind her own face) separated, one seeming to grow larger while the other grew fainter, as if one of them had stepped toward her while the other recoiled. And then they were both gone and she was alone with herself in the obscuring rain.

* * *

She continued to see them. The one with the dark eyes and heavy brows, glimpsed briefly as she checks her rearview before backing out of the driveway; the one with the curly hair and glasses, blurred in her bathroom mirror before she wipes away the fog - They were there, only ever briefly, only ever silent, in her compact mirrors and the sliding doors at the grocery store and, once, in the hazy arc of a fountain.

Though she’d never put much stock in children’s games, the name popped into her head one morning while she was brushing her teeth and saw the one man’s bleeding face in the reflection. _My own Bloody Mary_ , she thought, and laughed at the absurdity. It was only luck and circumstance that proved her naming accurate when she passed the mirror over the piano and saw more than a face - saw a torso, drenched and hollow.

The other she called Shirley Temple because the theme felt right and she felt that any spike he had was less alcohol burn and more citrus and spice and fizz. How she sensed attitudes from them, reflected, didn’t make sense; they never spoke and hardly moved, except for the few times it seemed they noticed her back, and were just as surprised as she had been initially.

The first few times, it was a shock. It was only moments, hardly long enough for one of them to recognize the other. And the two men never seemed to recognize each other; in fact, it seemed a rare event that Bev saw both of them in the same snapshot of time. Eventually, she grew to expect them.

It was when they began to speak that she remembered their real names.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at a fic, so I appreciate your interest and your patience! More chapters are coming, with more dialogue and action and less internal narration, I promise! Follow me on Twitter at @eidolocene


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